Seneca - College of Stoic Philosophers

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SENECA 175Seneca, ' to strip things of their glamour and tocontemplate each as it is in itself: youwill findthat they contain nothing formidable but yourown fear. ' ^ 'Non effedus sed efficientia timorspectat,'he says elsewhere; it is the pomp andcircumstance of pain and death (the only positivephysical evils), not pain and death themselves,which we fear, that is, from which we suffer inanticipation. We think death the greatest ofevils, when the only evil connected with it isone which vanishes on its appearance, namely,the terror it inspires. We are indignant andcomplain, and do not perceive that the onlyreality of ill is to be found in our indignationand complaints.To have a right judgment in all things it issufficient to have our own judgment (or perceptionof the differences between things) unbiased bythat of others ;then we acquire the inestimableboon of becoming lords of ourselves. When aman serves his own will and not other persons orthings he will do right, because he then acts onand general thoughts are just.general principles ;No man is a rogue for the pleasure of being arogue, but to gain some end which seems to him ,a good one, but which to the philosopher would'not seem worth a struggle were it even attainableinnocently. The slave of his passions may fancythat in serving them he is serving his own will ;but it is not so, for he has lost his self-controland must obey those who are able to gratify ornot to gratify those passions. He is, as Hamlet*Ep. 24.